The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 27 November 2006
by Geraldine Brooks
As a nation, we have learned recently that idealism tends not to be compatible with a state of war. One would think this isn't a lesson that we'd have to learn again, but here we are. By adopting the character of Mr. March, absent father figure from Alcott's Little Women, Brooks explores the collision between idealism and war. In this case, it is the idealism of the transcendentalist movement in 19th-century Concord, Massachusetts meeting the opening months of the American Civil War. And it's a brutal collision. The book opens with a vivid evocation of the chaos of Civil War battles, and its graphic depiction of the realities of the time don't slow down from there. March lives in a world of ideals, grateful for the opportunity to put his devotion to the abolition of slavery to the test in the real world, but encountering only the grim facts of a troubled nation. By the end, of course, we can expect he'll have learned something about the nature of idealism. Taking on a character already depicted in fiction is a daunting task, but March, himself, doesn't make a dramatic appearance in Little Women. This reviewer hasn't read Louisa May Alcott's classic, which remains so popular to this day, so it is difficult to judge whether Brooks adheres to the style of the earlier work. It is clear that she takes March on a journey deeper and more troubling than that of his girls back home. He encounters the social structure of Southern plantations, the brutality of slavery up close, the grit and blood of gruesome Civil War fighting, and the thick-headed callousness on both sides of the conflict. When he tries to help a liberated plantation give freedom, education and independence to the former slaves, he is repeatedly brought down by ongoing racism and the war that still rages around him. Key points in this book adhere to the timeline of Little Women, but this reader expects that this is a very different work. Certainly, having read the earlier novel would enhance the experience of this one. However, Geraldine Brooks has created a moving and compelling work of literature on her own. There are echoes of the moral conundrum of our present Iraq war. There are enduring questions of idealism in the face of a chaotic and indifferent world. All are intertwined in a busy, meticulously researched and well-wrought narrative.
(For this book, Brooks was awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.)